God the Invisible King by H.G. Wells

Are any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God?

This is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it reappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious interest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and the Calvinist. From its very opening proposition modern religion sweeps past and far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans and Methodists, in its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of God. Arminians seem merely to have insisted that God has conditioned himself, and by his own free act left men free to accept or reject salvation. To the realist type of mind -- here as always I use "realist" in its proper sense as the opposite of nominalist -- to the old-fashioned, over-exact and over-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague and unsatisfying.